Tracy Elementary to stay open; Easton Area nixes plan to close school

THE MORNING CALL FILE PHOTO

Tracy Elementary School honored its Tracy Trackers program for an official of Highmark Foundation in this 2007 file photo. Despite a district-wide study last year recommending the building be closed, Tracy Elementary will remain open.

Tracy Elementary School honored its Tracy Trackers program for an official of Highmark Foundation in this 2007 file photo. Despite a district-wide study last year recommending the building be closed, Tracy Elementary will remain open. (THE MORNING CALL FILE PHOTO)

Easton Area School District's Tracy Elementary School in Palmer Township will remain open, despite a districtwide study last year recommending the building be closed.

District administrators will not recommend the closure of any elementary school building, Superintendent John Reinhart said in a statement issued Monday afternoon.

Last year, the school board hired the Wilkes-Barre-based Pennsylvania Economy League for $16,000 to analyze and project demographics and community-growth patterns in the district for the next 10 years.

The report also examined Easton's school buildings and made recommendations for how the district could save money.

That report showed district enrollment is expected to decline about 11 percent over the next 10 years.

"A lot of our elementary buildings are underutilized as far as capacity," said district Chief Operating Officer Mike Simonetta.

The report outlined the strengths and weaknesses of each of the district's seven elementary schools and suggested closing Tracy Elementary, which houses about 350 students in kindergarten through fourth grade, Simonetta said.

The report suggested Tracy Elementary could be reconfigured to house the district's administrative offices and the Easton Academy, a school providing off-site education to students with behavioral problems in Grades 5-12.

Tracy students would have been relocated to the district's other elementary schools.

Under that plan, the Easton Academy building on Edgewood Avenue and district administration building on Bushkill Drive could be sold to generate revenue, Simonetta explained.

Simonetta said the district's administrators will present other possible cost-saving options during Tuesday's Buildings and Grounds Committee meeting at 6 p.m. in the Easton Area School District Administration Center at 1801 Bushkill Drive.

The full board will be present at the committee meeting, but it is not expected to vote on any of the new alternatives, said school board President Frank Pintabone.

Simonetta declined to comment on what new options will be presented, saying the presentation will be the first time board members will be seeing the alternatives.

The alternatives will be based off information contained in the study, which was released late last year.

"A lot of the recommendations we will make are things administrations, prior to us, and boards, prior to us, have talked about," Simonetta said.

Since announcing the possible closure of Tracy Elementary in November, parents have implored the board to keep the school open.

One parent presented a petition with more than 100 signatures to the school board earlier this year asking the district to keep the school open, Simonetta said.